9:47

I’m drawing a self-portrait of my legs right now, crossed at the knee, then crossed at the ankle, and, huh, now realizing my crotch can be seen from the middle of the street outside. Moving the pad from side to side so I can get every pubic hair I have. Forests are easier to draw than bush. Bush is definitely harder. Oh, Christ, ‘twould appear I’ve stimulated myself by accident which I do not need right now, what with so little time left before I have to turn it in for my final project that I never got okayed. I just hope the Prof. doesn’t mind a little of my own erotica. Flesh pics. Suitable for a Band-Aid ad, maybe, but precious little else. Damned if I can make this as breezy or as solitary as I really am, as it really is, but, that’s an Artist for you. Always fucking with reality.
J. Dove is surprised it’s cold here. I had to remind him that it’s December, even in New Orleans. And he kept looking me up and down when I’d turn away and I couldn’t find a goddamned thing in his eyes that made we want to put my cigarette out in his face. He kept talking about the tales of the great rum runners like he wants to do nothing now but rest, and the last thing he said before he slept? About going down there and why he wanted to return? "Guts," I drawled.

"That wasn’t the reason," he said. "Ask anyone who’s ever been there. You can’t even cut the air with a knife. Inflation is $1,100% a year. Take down your 501’s and buy a house on the water with them. Raise your falcons, save some people, just don’t ever let them make you choose, b/c they’re all fighting to get to you. You’re white, you gaze, you swim in the river. And you get points with the locals for not carrying a gun. You just make sure you’re not a target."

These words I heard between sheets I’d laid that morning when the tea was ready, my dog, Sludge, was ripping out the TV plug, I started this letter, cleaned the kitchen while listening to Bitches Brew, put a bottle of Pinot Noir on ice, filled my lighter (his lighter). He said he lost mine as soon as he arrived, but he gave me one he got where he was born.

"Estrelica," he said to me, "Everything about this place is wrong. From the winds of heaven to the land of Hong Kong, from the Isle of View to the first few feet of shore, where it drops and the ocean floor holds the hunting knife I hid for you. How many times did I reach for you, blind alleys, bright mornings and all? And it was always, ‘Look, what else?’, you’d say. Sheets of lightning did a jig for you....Whistling Pete’s and Black Snakes and Roman Candles spat sparks all along the beach for you in the howling wind, headlights after headlights, the water waved, the undertow roiled, you kicked off your shoes for the moist nude soil. A castle with a road around it, you piled in the sand. A washed-up stingray and the palm of your hand. Grasshoppers all around, but no bell-crickets at all. Cicadas and a Katydid laughed and cried down the hall.

"Do you see what I feel in my eyes for the sound of the sea...when it drowns me out, and shreds my voice into a hymn as I blink into the indigo sky, flick some stars further away, then go back inside.

"And after sleep has come for the weary, before the moon glows up so proud, that dark sun white with every color tucked inside it knocking about the sky, now black, now blue. Doesn’t rest, like the sun. The proper sun.

"From thousands of miles away, the voices of everyone I’ve ever met and god knows whom I ever will, those who can’t scream, let alone pick out the notes of their cawl and shake them down, line them up and march through the tune of themselves.

"Accelerate, Estrelica, with your knee bending down in the field. Reach on in, lass, hold it up, suck in your gut, and blow it through the cyclone fence.

"You know what I’m going to tell you, and I know how much it’s going to hurt, but you’ve been blessed with the curse of love. Insatiable, these souls are. Insatiable for themselves, and you simply remind them of who they wish to be. All of their dramas and all of your applause will never be enough for the. Nor the shine of your lunar ass, the north winds you withstand, the summertime in your chest, the way you lick their wounds, nor the way you suck out the poison and let it drip from your mouth like a tear.

"If I knew what evil was, I’d show it to you. But all I see are reasons. Everyone’s goddamned reasons."

Go to hell, J. Dove. I’m just horny.

In the dark I write this, so I can’t read it. Also so I don’t wake whoever it is lying next to me. One pure tear is more than I can afford but a lot less trouble than just reaching over to touch him. I wish, I wish....I wish I could just let it go. I wish.

I’m tired. I want to sleep. Leave me alone.